This invention relates to a silver halide color photosensitive material (hereinafter referred to as photographic material), and more particularly to a photographic material which can automatically form a color image and an unsharp mask.
As a photographic material which can form a color image and unsharp mask in order to secure a color image excellent in sharpness, French Pat. No. 2,260,124 has disclosed a photographic material which was made by orderly laminating a physical developing nuclei-containing layer which contains a ballasted coupler, a layer which contains a scavenger for the oxidized of color-developing agents, and a photo-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer which contains a ballasted coupler. Therein is disclosed a method that, a color negative image is obtained by exposing and color-developing using a first color developer which does not contain any silver halide solvent, and then the unsharp positive image is obtained by physical color-development using a second color developer which contains a silver halide solvent, as a method desirable to obtain a color negative image and an unsharp positive image using said photographic material.
However for such a photographic material, it is necessary to make a color-developing reaction occur in exposed areas in order to obtain the color negative image, and to make a physically color-developing reaction occur using dissolved silver halide in unexposed areas in order to obtain the unsharp positive image. Therefore, it is essential to make the scavenger for oxidized color developing agents, present between two layers which contain ballasted couplers in order to prevent dispersion of oxidized color-developing agents, which are produced when the color negative image is formed, into the physically color-developing nuclei-containing layer.
In other words, the absence of such a scavenger would cause part of the oxidized color-developing agents, which are produced in the exposure areas, to disperse into the physically color-developing nuclei-containing layers, and, consequently, would cause an unsharp negative image to form therein by color-developing reaction, resulting in failure to obtain both color negative and unsharp positive images as desired. In addition, the absence of the scavenger would make it difficult to improve the image sharpness because of its difficulty to make the material thinner due to the essentiality of the three layers including said scavenger-containing layer.
Furthermore, according to this method, it is necessary to conduct color-development twice using different two color-developers. If one and only development were conducted using only the silver halide solvent-containing developer, it would make it infeasible to control either the color development procedure for obtaining the color negative image, or the formation of silver halide complex for supplying silver ions to the physically developing nuclei-containing layer. When such controls are unsuccessful, and the complex is formed in excess, the formation of the color negative image becomes poor, and, correspondingly, the excessive dispersing of the complex into the physically developing nuclei-containing layer, resulting in the formation of unsharp positive image in areas where the color negative image should be properly formed. Thus the purpose of obtaining color negative and unsharp mask images as desired would not be attained.
This invention aims at resolving drawbacks of the prior art as described above.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a photographic material which gives an image improved in sharpness by forming both color negative and unsharp positive images.
Another object of the invention is to provide a photographic material which gives very sharp images with a fewer number of essential layers.
A further object of the invention is to provide a photographic material which can form both color negative and unsharp positive images of good quality through the only one developing process.